Golden Sayings   

them? What Physician applies to men to come and be healed?
(Though indeed I hear that the Physicians at Rome do nowadays
apply for patients--in my time they were applied to.) I apply to
you to come and hear that you are in evil case; that what
deserves your attention most in the last thing to gain it; that
you know not good from evil, and are in short a hapless wretch; a
fine way to apply! though unless the words of the Philosopher
affect you thus, speaker and speech are alike dead.

CXXI

A Philosopher's school is a Surgery: pain, not pleasure, you
should have felt therein. For on entering none of you is whole.
One has a shoulder out of joint, another an abscess: a third
suffers from an issue, a fourth from pains in the head. And am I
then to sit down and treat you to pretty sentiments and empty
flourishes, so that you may applaud me and depart, with neither
shoulder, nor head, nor issue, nor abscess a whit the better for
your visit? Is it then for this that young men are to quit their
homes, and leave parents, friends, kinsmen and substance to mouth
out Bravo to your empty phrases!

CXXII

If any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by
reason of himself alone. For God hath made all men to enjoy
felicity and constancy of good.

CXXIII

Shall we never wean ourselves--shall we never heed the
teachings of Philosophy (unless perchance they have been sounding
in our ears like and enchanter's drone):--
This World is one great City, and one if the substance
whereof it is fashioned: a certain period indeed there needs must
be, while these give place to those; some must perish for others
to succeed; some move and some abide: yet all is full of friends--
first God, then Men, whom Nature hath bound by ties of kindred
each to each.

CXXIV

Nor did the hero weep and lament at leaving his children
orphans. For he knew that no man is an orphan, but it is the
Father that careth for all continually and for evermore. Not by
mere report had he heard that the Supreme God is the Father of
men: seeing that he called Him Father believing Him so to be, and
in all that he did had ever his eyes fixed upon Him. Wherefore in
whatsoever place he was, there is was given him to live happily.